{"id":348,"date":"2025-04-30T17:07:48","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/?p=348"},"modified":"2025-04-24T17:21:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T17:21:18","slug":"why-writing-is-revising-and-why-it-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/2025\/04\/30\/why-writing-is-revising-and-why-it-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Writing is Revising (And Why it Works)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Zipporah Marse<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Staring at a blank document isn\u2019t easy. Wherever you\u2019re writing\u2014whether it\u2019s on Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or a plain old piece of paper\u2014the bright white of that page gets increasingly more blinding as you realize how few words you have to populate it. Many writers share this anxiety. What if nothing comes out? What if what does come out is the worst ever? Why can\u2019t there already be words on this page?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, what if I told you there can be words already on the page?<\/p>\n\n\n

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Many have heard the phrase \u201cwriting is revising,\u201d but what does it actually mean? Revising is more than taking a rough draft of a piece and fixing a few misplaced words or commas; it\u2019s revising. <\/em>It\u2019s overhauling the entire project and changing it to make it that much better. It\u2019s taking two sentences from a note on your phone and turning it into three pages of narrative. It\u2019s the sapling growing from a seed, getting bigger and bigger until it finally turns into a tree; all you have to do is water it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sorry for calling your passion project a tree. Stay with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you think of revising as the act of turning something small into something big, suddenly there is no blank page to work-from-nothing on; there is only a jumble of notes that you have to revise<\/em> into a story. So, take your abstract thoughts from your journal onto your page, record yourself talking about your project and transcribe your words into full sentences, simply type the names (or just adjectives) of your main character onto your Word doc. Give yourself words <\/em>to stare at instead of a blank page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not here to lecture you about plotting, but plotting is the easiest way to get words to come to you. Whether you want to die by the hero\u2019s journey, concretely separate your scenes into three acts, or just include a simple beginning, middle, and end, plotting gives you parameters to fit your words into. Give yourself a seed to grow into a tree instead of trying to will one into existence from nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you have characters, plotting (or a general idea of where you want the story to go), and a few sentences stuck in your mind, you can either jump right into your first attempt at a draft or you can keep fiddling around, writing just a few paragraphs at a time or expanding on some of your research\u2014as long as you get around to your first draft sooner or later. With your notes behind you, it doesn\u2019t matter if your first draft is the worst, because deleting it doesn\u2019t mean going back to nothing, it means going back to your notes, which you\u2019ve already built on before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you have enough of your narrative in actual prose form, then you might reach what people usually refer to as revising. This is scary, but it shouldn\u2019t stop you. During this critical trek through your writing, you must remember that even if you erase the pages you just finished writing, that doesn\u2019t mean you wasted time or the words you wrote are useless\u2014quite the contrary. It means you\u2019ve developed your world, characters, and voice enough that what you wrote at the beginning doesn\u2019t fit anymore. It\u2019s concrete proof that you\u2019ve grown and have already learned so much about yourself and your story in just those few pages.<\/p>\n\n\n

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When I write, I always have a specific document I call \u201cdumping grounds,\u201d where I put paragraphs that I really like but simply didn\u2019t fit in my story anymore. Maybe I\u2019m sensitive and can\u2019t stand killing my darlings, or maybe I will be able to return to my segregated paragraphs and pull something useful out of them later, but just the act of saving them, and not outright deleting them, always gives me the boost I need to let myself completely rewrite something with a brand-new draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having copywriters, or just close friends you trust with your story, can be great, but don\u2019t let them deter you from properly revising something. If you don\u2019t love the way a specific scene ends, don\u2019t wait for line edits to make it work better; go back, go big picture, and figure out if there\u2019s another way you can end the scene before giving your trusted narrative to an editor. While you\u2019re at it, let the edits you receive wash over you like that water pouring over a sapling. If you\u2019ve already been willing to cut apart and redo your work several times, the few pricks and prods of editors shouldn\u2019t feel like more than a quick sting. You, and your story, are growing. Take the advice and grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, you get to the end of a story and you\u2019re satisfied. Sometimes, you\u2019re not. Unless the due date is right around the corner, you need to give your story time to cement on its own without your wide eyes watching over it every second of the day. Your satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, will fade, and you\u2019ll eventually be able to return to your story with the perspective needed to continue it. Whether continuing means adding or taking away a few scenes or once again starting from scratch with a whole new draft, you\u2019ll be ready to take that task on, because that\u2019s what you do. You\u2019re a writer. You write. Yet, at this point, with all of that behind you, you\u2019re certain that what you\u2019re doing right now is revising<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zipporah Marse Staring at a blank document isn\u2019t easy. Wherever you\u2019re writing\u2014whether it\u2019s on Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or a plain old piece of paper\u2014the bright white of that page gets increasingly more blinding as you realize how few words you have to populate it. Many writers share this anxiety. What if nothing comes out? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions\/351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}